So, you know, I am like violently repulsed by former Idaho governor Dirk Kempthorne. More than repulsed. If, hypothetically, I had been given the choice between having Dirk Kempthorne as our new Secretary of the Interior and being forced to sleep on a pillow stuffed with strange men’s pubic hair from now until death, I would be crying myself to sleep Every Night.

I mean, he’s pure evil. Who else but an agent of destruction would have their eyebrows routinely sculpted to resemble demonic horns?

Alas, on May 26, he was confirmed (surprise!) as our new Secretary of the Interior.

After his confirmation, Senator Cantwell (whom I, uh, politely criticized for her benign words of welcome to Kempthorne’s nomination) sent out emails to her constituents who expressed concern about this development. Here’s my favorite graph from Cantwell’s email:

As a member of the Senate Energy and National Resources Committee, I raised a number of concerns to Mr. Kempthorne during his nomination hearing on May 4, 2006. Having been vocally opposed to many of the environmental policies and decisions pushed the Bush Administration, I wanted to learn more about his plans as Interior Secretary and how his views differ from his controversial predecessor Gale Norton. Specifically, I noted my objections to Administration plans to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, gut the 2001 Roadless Rule, and cut funding for our national parks. I was pleased to learn that Mr. Kempthorne opposes the sale of our public lands to either pay down the national debt or to pay for the County Payments program, both of which are policies proposed by the Bush Administration that I have strongly opposed.

Actually, Kempthorne was all for gutting the 2001 Roadless Rule, although he claimed it was because “the Forest Service did not provide the state with maps of roadless sites and rebuffed Idaho’s requests to become a partner in the rule’s development,” and not because he’s thick as thieves with Boise-Cascade and coincidentally, “the only timber harvesting permitted in roadless areas would be for habitat restoration and fire prevention.”

And now here’s a graph from Jeffrey St. Clair’s article on the new Gale Norton in Slacks:

Kempthorne’s nomination was momentarily blocked by Florida Senator Bill Nelson, who begged for the governor’s assurance that he not open the Florida coastline to oil drilling. Kempthorne told the senator he would make no such pledge. Indeed, he brayed that his top priority would be to expand drilling for oil across all federal lands [ANWR, anyone?], including off shore reserves. Nelson wobbled and the Democrats Maginot Line crumbled once again. Kempthorne sailed through the committee without a vote against him and scarcely one probing question about the corruption scandal that shadows his every footstep. A week later the entire senate took a test vote on his nomination: only eight Democrats voted no. A few minutes later his nomination was approved on a voice vote without dissent.

Good times to come. Sigh. I fucking hate Dirk Kempthorne. Still.